Vertical Wind Axis Turbines

Well this is interesting. Vertical axis wind turbines. Theoretically, these things can generate more power than standard horizontal axis turbines.

Common complaints about VAWT are:

Easy to break

Cannot be scaled into large applications

The technology is not as mature as horizontal axis wind turbines

I suspect that this is the same kind of resistance we see when discussing oil vs renewable energy. A competition in the marketplace. If more efforts were placed in researching the VAWT, I’m very sure that it will have a good chance of becoming practical.

Just imagine if in small scale applications, every home was equipped with a VAWT. This would make all our electricity bills a whole lot more affordable. Combine these with solar panels and you would have a very ideal combination.

VAWTs aren’t new

It’s interesting to note that VAWTs have been in use for probably over 2000 years. This technology was found in China and Persia.

No one knows when or where people first built windmills to do work. The first instance may have been in China more than 2,000 years ago, but archaeologists have found no definite record of their use there before 1219 AD. The earliest recorded windmill design found was Persian in origin, and was invented around 500–900 AD. Other sources date it to as early as 200 to 250 B.C.[3][4] This design was the panemone, with vertical lightweight wooden sails attached by horizontal struts to a central vertical shaft. It was first built to pump water, and subsequently modified to grind grain as well.[1]

I did a little bit of checking. The consensus appears to be that wind turbines pose a big threat to birds, but not as big as cats do.

Most of the articles that pop up on google are “myth busting” articles that offer data on avian deaths by wind turbines. But there’s a distinct lack of data comparing bird deaths by VAWTs vs HAWTs. One of the reasons stated is that HAWT owners conceal this data. Some others say that there aren’t any standard ways to measure deaths by turbines and so the data is unreliable.

There was this one article here by a wind turbine manufacturer stating that VAWTs generate less wind turbulence than HAWTs, and so they are safer for birds.